1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a masking means comprising a substance provided to be deposited onto a surface in order to mask the latter, and protect it from outer affection.
Such masking means are widely used during painting of various objects. Thereby, the masking has as its main objective to protect against any outer affection by preventing colour from being applied to adjacent surfaces that are not to be painted. Masking is normally required during the painting of houses, furniture, cars, boats, etc., and it is important that the masking means used are both reliable and easy to handle.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A very common masking means is masking tape, which in its most simple form is formed by a paper which is provided with glue on one side thereof. There are also more sophisticated types of masking tapes, where the glue is present only along the edge regions of the tape or where a strip or the like provided with glue is applied to the egde regions of a masking tape as the latter is applied to the surface which is to be masked. There are also varioust, more or less sophisticated devices for the application of the masking tape.
In those cases, when a precise masking of surfaces that have a complicated shape is required, it may, however, often be difficult to mask these surfaces with reliability and precision by means of conventional masking tapes. Thereby, one normally uses different types of templates, from which a surface corresponding to the one which is to be painted is, for instance, cut or sheared, after which the template may be placed at the intended location, and painting may subsequently take place. It is important that the template bears tightly against the support at Its border towards the surface which is to be painted, in order to prevent paint from penetrating in between the support and the template. Therefore, the template often needs to be provided with some kind of adhesive or in some other way be brought to a tight contact against the support. This contributes to make the practical handling of such templates somewhat complicated and/or time demanding. In those cases when one side of the template is pre-preparated with some type of adhesive, the template also tends to be of a disposable type, which in many cases results in a huge consumption of material, as it might be neccessary to use a plurality of templates. Moreover, templates, as well as masking tape, may be very hard to apply to curved surfaces in a suitable way. For this purpose, there is often required a very precise adjustment of the template or the masking tape, which might be both difficult and time demanding, particularly for an amateur.
Those more developed types of tapes, application devices and templates that are to be found at the market today are relatively expensive, resulting in the additional cost for these not being seen as motivated by the one who, with a non-professional objective, is planning to paint and mask surfaces.